Surely it's illegal to fire someone for refusing to break the law? Everyone's first duty is to the law, not his employer.

Probably true in most countries, but not being familiar with Brazil's labor laws I wouldn't want to hazard a guess as to what would happen to this guy. In the US, if they wanted to get rid of the guy, they'd come up with a paper reason that wasn't necessarily the *real* reason for the firing.

"The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it's scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based. And if you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened, you don't deserve to wear that uniform!"...but he isn't wearing a uniform.

Google has no data centers in Brazil.So your Pass the buck is the only true course. I'm sure that is exactly what the hapless Google employee did.He has no control over datacenters. He's probably a marketing droid.

But Brazil decided to take hostages any way..

The data centers not being in Brazil doesn't mean that the Google Brazil exec has no control over them. He *might* not have any control over what happens there, but the physical location of the data centers doesn't dictate that.

Yes, it does.Brazil's citizens sought information from the US, or maybe the closer Chili datacenters. The US, and US companies are under no obligation to prevent those citizens of Brazil from seeking data anywhere on the net. If all Google traffic to Brazil went thru a Google Datacenter, then Barzil might have a claim.

You may be content to allow Brazil or perhaps Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the right to dictate to the world what information might be shown, but nobody else is. If Brazil wants to block Brazil at th

If the US did this, you would be championing the company and condemning the US for trying to extend itslaws to other countries.

You may be content to allow Brazil or perhaps Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the right to dictate to the world what information might be shown, but nobody else is.

Jump to conclusions much? Try focusing on what I say instead of what you imagine I might mean.

The location means that the Brazilian Government can't physically storm the data center and do what they want with it. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not the Google Exec from Brazil has authority to block a video. That is entirely a matter internal to Google. I don't claim to know what Google's rules on the matter are, but if they gave him the OK to block videos, then he can do it regardless of where the servers are.

Not only that, but Google had blocked The Innocence of Muslims things in certain countries stating that they follow the laws and culture of the areas they have offices in.

So we know that Google itself has the ability to block access to it on a country specific basis. The Google exec, even if he didn't have the ability, had the ability to ask Google to cooperate with local laws and local law enforcement agencies as they claim they do all across the world already.

Hell, the US will arrest foreign nationals [wikipedia.org] in foreign countries who have no presence in the US whatsoever. Not to mention the assassinations [nytimes.com] of US citizens without any due process. There are vanishingly few circumstances where the US government can claim any sort of moral high ground.

Before I click the assassination link, are those people carrying guns in a war zone while fighting against America?

Yes, after clicking it, it looks like they are. This isn't some guy they shot in New York for being a political enemy, it's someone who moved overseas, to Yemen, and joined a known terrorist cell which is currently waging war on America. The idea that they are actually going to walk in and arrest him before taking him to trial is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

I'm brazilian. The law here in this aspect is simple: if a judge commans something in a court order, whoever is ordered to must comply. Probably Google Brazil had the court order served, but didn't comply for some reason (slack, or someone at a lower position had forgot or intended to prank his manager for the kicks). As ultimately the responsible is the head of operations, the police went right to the guy. I believe it's not wise to mess with a judge anywhere on this planet. If it makes people more relieve

Are brazillian companies run in such a way that it is normal to expect a Janitor at a Sales office to be able to over rule the head office?

If A US judge decided to hold a secretary of Embraer's US office hostage until the parent company nuckeled under to some unreasonable demand would Brazillians shrug? Or would they be burning the flag at the embasy gates.

In Brazil, when you cannot comply with a court order of this magnitude, you get your lawyers in the case ASAP to either talk the judge out of it, or get a temporary relief from another judge in order to have enough time to do something about it. And that will be at most 48H, I think.

What you DON'T do is to ignore the judge. You WILL get detained (i.e. held within a police building, not in a cell) for a while until you manage to get the judge to understand why you cannot comply to his demands as written, an

Google complies with brazilian court orders by the thousands every year, and it should be no news. Google complies with court orders from every country it has a headquarter.Mr. Fabio, a brazilian citizen, Google employee and top executive, may not be able to obey the order by himself, but he's capable to command another Google employee to do so. So ultimately he is the main responsible person.I don't know how Google Brazil is run, but every company around the world with 10+ employees needs an hierarquical structure where someone at the top delegates to his tenants and it goes down under to the cleaning guy. And people make mistakes, get dismissed and so on. Someone messed up and will have to take the heat. And Mr. Fabio wasn't imprisioned, he just had to go to a police department to answer some questions and to be made aware of the problem and act upon.If an USA judge issued a court order the police must comply, be the target BillG, the elusive Embraer secretary or whoever. If the secretary is an USA citizen, that's it, if not the diplomacy will take place, as every UN member would expect to act.Burning flags is not a brazilian national sport. We're pretty orderly (fanfare to the common man playing in the backgound) and working people.There are no double standards here. Brazil respects international laws pretty much as everyone else. Please remember Flight 1907, when USA pilots downed a Boeing full of brazilian citizens just because some USA senator didn't want to be tracked in brazilian airspace by brazilian airspace authorities. Nobody burned USA flags, the pilots were repatriated to USA and propably nothing wrong happened to them, despite reaping more than one hundred brazilian souls. Because we respect the law.Brazilian judges aren't pluripotent tyrants in constant tantrum spree. They're accountable and overviewed by the legal system, that can punish the judge and overrule him/her if appropriate, just as every really civilized western country with representatives elected by the people.

Please keep your lies to a minimum. As for Flight 1907 incident, the Embraer Legacy 600 was not carrying any US senator, it was being delivered to US by Embraer with two employees of Embraer, two from the company who bought the jet and one NY Times journalist. It was the Brazilian air traffic controllers who sent the two planes toward each other on the same flight path and altitude. The Embraer pilots were blamed because they survived. Both Brazilian and US agencies placed blame on the air traffic controlle

Brazilian judges, like the judges of all countries in this world, are pluripotent tyrants who answer for very little. They are also completely unable to understand that in practice they hold no power over the information flow in the Internet. Someone should teach them about the Streisand effect...

I only talk about local judges because that's all I know (and I have a brother that is a state judge). I concede most judges have an inflated ego, and in fact it may even prove to be necessary for the profession (as displaying authority may be a better deterrent than only having authority).Judges, are people just like soylent green is. They make mistakes, some terrible. In 2005 a judge (Percy Barbosa), while drunken, killed a clerk in a supermarket just for the kicks. He got 15 years of jail time and had to

About the Streisand effect, as long as the thing is played down, the problem dissolves in internet's white noise. That's why we got notice of this case, while the other thousands of court orders Google complies to in Brazil and around the world everyday take so little to no publicity.Being exposed in a Youtube video may be very damaging, but having it on Youtube for ad aeternam is worse than having a big pop of publicity at once and people forgetting it in a week or less as the next fad/meme/news enters the

Or, alternatively, perhaps the judge is fully aware that he can't control information flow on the Internet, and that the case will only draw attention to it, but has been asked to enforce a local law and is doing so. If the law says 'this is illegal and this is the punishment' and a prosecutor prosecutes it, and the facts put before him show that the prosecutor is right, what is he supposed to do?

You may have read articles in the press over the last couple of weeks about YouTube videos in Brazil.
Given all the interest, we wanted to explain what has happened, and why. First of all some basic
principles about the service. Our goal is for YouTube to be a community that everyone can enjoy, as well
as a platform for free speech around the world. This can cause real challenges, because what is OK in
one country may be offensive or even illegal in another.

So we have clear community guidelines about the kind of videos that are unacceptable--and when they
are flagged, we review and if necessary remove them. If a video is illegal in a particular country--and we
have a local version of the service there, as in Brazil--we will restrict access to it, after receiving a valid
court order or government complaint. Because we are deeply committed to free expression, we often
push back on requests that we do not believe are valid. For example, we were recently in court in the US
arguing that videos were perfectly legitimate and should stay on YouTube.

Now for what’s happened in Brazil. As usual during an election season, we have had a lot of court
orders to remove videos that are critical of political candidates. As always, we have reviewed them all--
and pushed back on the many legal complaints that we believe are invalid. For example, last week, we
appealed a court order to remove videos from YouTube. While we were waiting for that appeal to be
heard, an arrest warrant was issued for me as country director of Google Brazil.

Late last night, we learned that our final legal appeal has been denied and so now we have no choice but
to block the video in Brazil. We are deeply disappointed that we have never had the full opportunity to
argue in court that these were legitimate free speech videos and should remain available in Brazil.

Despite all this, we will continue to campaign for free expression globally—not just because it’s a key
tenet of free societies, but also because more information generally means more choice, more power,
more economic opportunity and more freedom for people. As Article 19 of the United Nations’ Universal
Declaration of Human Rights states, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this
right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information
and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Ironically, the user who published one of the videos has now removed it and closed their account--
showing just what a chilling effect these episodes can have on free speech.

The buck stops here. The executive is the responsible party for local operation. Legal filings would indicate the same. It works the same in the US. An executive's only out is if the offense is the action of another individual rather than a department or such.

If Google is doing business in Brazil, they have to abide to the laws of Brazil, whether the servers are hosted there or not.

If that Fabio Silva guy does in fact work for Google, and is in fact working in Brazil, that would lead me to believe that Google does in fact have a business presence in Brazil, which means they are required to comply with the law there.

BTW, last I heard, Google owned Orkut, which at some point was the biggest social network in Brazil.

I don't think Google Brazil *can* comply. If Google Brazil is set up anything like how my employer's international entities are set up, they are actually separate and distinct legal entities from the parent company (which is HQ'd in USA) that the parent company has 100% ownership of.

The guy who is in charge of the Brazil office can't effect a decision at the home office.

Brazilian law may deliberately hold executives of foreign subsidiaries responsible for their parent's actions, but from a legal perspective

I hope you're just saying that for rhetorical effect. Because like the US Brazil is a federal republic. Read TFA. It says this was a local court case, not an action of the federal government.

The analogy I'd use would be some US state carrying out the death penalty on a person convicted in a controversial case by a local court. Would you blame Obama for the man's death? Unless there's a clear reason to see the case as "rigged" against the convict, it would do mor

Exactly right. It would be nice if companies like Google would grow some balls and just say "OK. Fuck you. We're closing all our operations in your country".

Why exactly does Google need an office in Brazil anyway?. I've heard of this thing called The Internet that lets you communicate and do business will people all over the world without having to actually be in their country.

That's not how you do business and this is not a reason for not operating in some country. They earn money in Brazil and they would just lose that revenue by skipping a large economy just because of some silly youtube video. Having a local office helps you receive payments and is a major deal breaker expecially when dealing with corporate customers.

If, during american elections, people posted videos saying Obama is a rapist and favors abortion I'm sure it would be removed.

But the thing is, they can't enforce the law in their own country. If it is the case that the servers are in the US, the head of operations in brazil may literally have no power to force google in the US to do anything. And so Brazil can get mad as much as they want, but there's nothing they can do. What could happen, after a series of arrests by the Brazialian government of people in Brazil who "head" google's operations there, is that no one wants to sign up to be the "head" and Google takes its marble

If Google disobeys brazilian laws, Brazil will want Google to take its marbles an get the fsck outta here, of course.Who must rule Brazil is the elected Brazilian representatives and not a foreign corporation. I believe USA has its own dose of transantional mega corporations messing with USA politics and it's not good for the USA.We'll not sell out Amazonia to avoid upsetting Bayer.Wanna play in our sandbox? You have to play by our rules, the same way we have to comply if we want to play in yours.

They don't have a datacenter but they do have a local office and Google is a registred company in Brazil so they either (a) comply with local laws or (b) close the company local office. It really is that simple.

I can't resist to reply to you again, as it seems you are making the same point over again.

Yes, if there is a law that sets price caps locally on Texas, or at Federal level, Gazprom USA would be regulated for the oil it sells there. What it shouldn't be regulated if for the oil Gazprom Russia sells to China.

This unregulated international corporatism you are advocating for is something bad for all the citizens in the world.

If the US government passes a law that sets price caps, then Gasprom would have to either obey them, or leave the US. What is so strange about that.

And I don't see any kind of a conflict with the statement about Internet not being under the control of any one government. If a government wants to control the Internet inside it's own borders it can certainly try.

If the US government passes a law that sets price caps, then Gasprom would have to either obey them, or leave the US. What is so strange about that.

And I don't see any kind of a conflict with the statement about Internet not being under the control of any one government. If a government wants to control the Internet inside it's own borders it can certainly try.

Yes, they can try inside their own borders, Like Iran.But even Iran knows better than to order a company with nothing but a sales office in Iran how to act all over the world.

Brazil can block Google at their borders. Just like Iran.We probably stop buying Airplanes from Brazil. Meh!

The US law does apply to Gasprom in US territory. And they either (a) comply with local laws or (b) are denied the right to act inside the United States. What you are implying is simply stupid, which is regulating the market with fixed prices. In this case we are not talking about the sale of a product but the streaming of a video which the court ruled infringes election laws thereby threatens the sovernity of a country. We really shouldn't let private companies interfere with elections because that just em

Google is known to comply with local law and not display video's that are in violation of several nations laws, when requested to do so by the local authorities. After Thailand blocked youtube, they removed any video that could be insulting to Thailands king Bhumibol, to give an example. Similar actions to remove or at least block content have been taken in several countries after legal and sometimes economical pressure from the country. I'm sure that a next step from Brazil would be to name Google a criminal organization and block all their services for the entire country. It may not be the very next step, but eventually it will get to that point.

The most likely thing that will happens next is that Google will then comply because they can't afford to loose the business if it gets to that. Don't be evil, unless you are losing too much money. My analysiss of Google leaving China is that it wasn't about censorship, they complied to that for quite a while, but about too much effort for the money they were allowed to make by the Chinese government. They were being forced to censor *and* squeezed for the amount of cash they were allowed to pull out of the Chinese economy. The latter made applying the censorship just too much work to be profitable enough.

First of all, Google (the branch) is incorporated in Brazil, so by law it is a Brazilian company and has to follow Brazilian laws. This is way different than claiming jurisdiction because of nothing more than a top level domain, without any other kind of presence, like the US does. Google is a legal company in Brazil, with local offices, executives, employees and engineers and offers products in Brazil, in Portuguese, using a.com.br domain, to Brazilian customers. Users accept EULAs

A court order in Brazil gave an order, and google was in contempt, don't like it? change the law or don't operate there.

I doubt that he could have taken the video down in the first place. Google has a five digit number of employees. They do not all have access to remove videos from YouTube. I would have checked what the article had to say on that matter, but the link is broken.

A court order in Brazil gave an order, and google was in contempt, don't like it? change the law or don't operate there.

This logic doesn't work. "There" is globally, across the world, in over 140 countries. A ton of countries have laws that are in direct contradiction with one another. No, this doesn't mean that global companies should tailor their online presense to each and every country individually. I am free to publish a funny Mohammed cartoon here in Finland and I don't have to give 2 shits about what some jackass in Pakistan or Iran or wherever thinks about it or whatever their laws say about publishing such material

If you don't want to be subject of the laws of some particular country, then simply don't open an office in the country. You can still provide Internet services to them (and said country can try to block them if they really hate you).

But if you have an office, guess what? Its employees are all operating under the laws of the country in question. If a court of that country has issued a lawful order, what's unreasonable about them trying to enforce it on those employees?

Brazil is even the United States of America. And so is Mexico. Brazil's official name is Estados Unidos do Brasil, and Mexico's is Estados Unidos Mexicanos — and they are both located in America. Yes, America is a continent.

Even Argentina was, for some time, although the name was rather "United Provinces of Argentina". That name has changed, though.

Back in the day the naming was pretty haphazard - they've also separated Europe and Asia, despite it being a single continent geographically (Eurasia). Today we generally try to stick to some objective way of identifying continents, which means that there are two Americas as far as continents go.

It doesn't matter where you live; two separate land masses don't make a single continent. It's the only meaningful definition, since otherwise you can pretty much lump whatever you want however you want. Now you can dispute whether Eurasia and Africa are separate or not, but there's no doubt that North and South America are separate.

And no, I'm not a "Yank boy". Just FYI, this is the way things are taught in most of Europe.

Really, i'm completely against any kind of censorship and when i read about this the first time i tough it was something abusive.
But after looking at some of the videos... they are just a bunch of lies about the guy, with fake "documents" that doesn't exist showing things he didn't do it.
Here in Brazil there's a law that says something like this: if you accuse some candidate about anything during election you have do identify yourself. That's to protect people against things like this.
Google did not comply with the law, they were asked to remove and done nothing, now they say excuses like they aren't responsible about user content. When it' s major record company thay don't even ask.. google has their legs open to then.
Ridiculous position from a company that i have a lot of respect, hope they apologize their attitude.

How do you know they are lies? And as far as I can see, the accuser does identify himself (unless he's using a fake full name as his YouTube username). I'm also Brazilian and I understand the need for this kind of law, but under Brazil's electoral law, it should be the accuser who is prosecuted, not the owner of the platform he's using to make the accusation.

Brazil has a recurring problem with this - not sure how much it's the judges' fault or the prosecutors' fault, probably taking advantage of the fact that judges know nothing about how the internet works. Hopefully, our Internet Bill will be passed in Congress soon and end these bullshit interpretations of the law...

(Definitely agree with you on record companies though - Google is always quick to comply with theirs and Hollywood's take down orders.)

(Oh, and I'm not an Anonymous Coward, I just can't find where to identify myself!:P)

IANAL but IAMTAL, so the problem is another. There's a concept in brazilian law that is Solidary Responsibility. It means in this case that if somebody posts a defamatoty video on youtube he/she is the accountable person for the defamation case, but both him/her and Google are responsible for the video presence. Google, as a common carrier, has no direct responsibility concerning the defamation crime, but google is just able to take the video down as the sender is, so both can be ordered to take it down and

Mmmm.. okay. You may agree or disagree with Google's policies. However, your post raises an interesting question. What would happen in your country if something produced a video full of lies about the candidates, and left it anonymously at the door of as many citizens as possible? Would the police try to arrest someone in that case? If they did try to arrest someone, how likely do you think it would be that they go after the manufacturers of the tapes or digital devices where the videos were stored?

Google is able to remove the video, and it can do it faster than waiting to discover who the guy/gal is and prosecuting him/her and demmanding the person to remove the video.Let's take some reductio ad absurdum and just imagine the criminal who posted the video died being hanged on a carrot. Should the defamed guy be defamed ad aeternam because the criminal met his/her maker? Isn't more sensible to order Google to remove the offending video, and for Google to comply? Let's just be reasonable, people. Should

Mmmm.. okay. You may agree or disagree with Google's policies. However, your post raises an interesting question. What would happen in your country if something produced a video full of lies about the candidates, and left it anonymously at the door of as many citizens as possible? Would the police try to arrest someone in that case? If they did try to arrest someone, how likely do you think it would be that they go after the manufacturers of the tapes or digital devices where the videos were stored?

As a Canadian, and with regards to our last federal election, all I can say is that if a party posts lying and/or misleading videos accusing a candidate of things the accuser actually campaigns for but paints it in this case in a negative light... then the accusers get a majority government.

Accusers = Conservative Party of Canada (like US Republicans),

accused = Michael Ignatief, leader of Liberal Party of Canada (like US Democrats),